Reborn in 2011, I am the chief designer of aerospace.

Upon entering, a large, long table divides the space into two sections.

General Manager Liang, Engineer Lei, Engineer Lin, and Engineer Chen each sat upright, with their evaluation forms spread out in front of them, yet to be filled out.

At the other end of the table sat a lone swivel chair, with three thick stacks of documents on it.

Behind the four experts are the sapphire blue floor-to-ceiling windows of the Dongyu Group.

The scenery of Diaoyutai, Cishou Temple, and the Radio and Television Tower can be seen in its entirety.

The Third Ring Road is bustling with traffic.

"You must be Song Xingye?"

Liang Jianping waved to him, gesturing for him to sit in the chair opposite him, and said with a friendly expression, "Don't be nervous, let's chat casually."

Song Xingye nodded: "Okay, Mr. Liang."

"Young man, your resume is impressive. You're from the Jinan Youth Class, directly admitted to a PhD program, and you've been involved in the aerospace industry for about eight years now, haven't you?"

"Yes, Mr. Liang, I spent four years as an undergraduate and am now a fourth-year doctoral student. I've been researching aerospace engineering for eight years straight," Song Xingye replied neither humbly nor arrogantly. "Of course, I will continue to research it for the rest of my life."

"Don't you get tired of it?"

Mr. Liang asked with great interest, "I mean, don't you find it boring to study rockets and spacecraft year after year, day after day?"

"No, because I find it very interesting."

"interesting?"

"Yes, isn't that where the charm of science comes from? The materials and fuel needed to make rockets existed hundreds of millions or even billions of years ago, but it was only in the last hundred years that science and technology exploded."

Those monkeys that used to just swing in trees and eat bananas were able to leave the atmosphere and even take the first steps of humankind on another planet. That's both fascinating and remarkable.

Several experts laughed upon hearing this, and then General Manager Liang asked:

"But passion can't put food on the table. With your qualifications and education, you could easily earn a million a year after graduation by joining a large company, within two years. But if you come to Dongyu Group, you might not even reach that amount in ten years. Would you feel regretful?"

After all these years of hard work and studying, it wasn't easy to graduate. Don't you feel that this reward... is unfair to your efforts?

Song Xingye thought about this question seriously for a moment, then quickly shook his head and said:

"Perhaps everyone has their own ambitions. In my opinion, Dongyu Group is the place that suits me best."

"Good job, that's ambitious!"

Mr. Liang silently wrote a few words on the scoring sheet, then asked, "Tell me your thoughts on the aerospace industry, anything is fine, feel free to speak your mind."

After a moment's thought, Song Xingye quickly spoke:

"I believe that, given the current global situation, the aerospace industry and space exploration model will inevitably undergo a major revolution sooner or later."

"The traditional, government-dominated and monopolized aerospace industry will become a thing of the past, and private capital will continue to flow into this blue ocean."

Chief Engineer Liang raised an eyebrow, intrigued: "You mean, we'll follow in the footsteps of Country A and hand over our aerospace industry to companies like Boeing and Lockheed?"

"That's not the case. The national conditions are different, and given the lessons learned from companies like Boeing and Lockheed, I believe that our commercial spaceflight will still be firmly controlled by the government."

Song Xingye spoke eloquently: "In the future, the government will be responsible for scientific research, ecological cultivation and infrastructure construction, while the high-risk, high-return aspects such as application development, product design and commercial launch will be handed over to private entrepreneurs who have dreams, passion and a sense of responsibility."

"Well said, continue."

"In short, it means that the government is responsible for those space projects that require large investments, have long cycles, and are cost-insensitive, and it brings together all the fragmented resources and puts them together as one. For example, lunar exploration projects, Mars exploration projects, deep space exploration, and so on."

Private enterprises, on the other hand, are responsible for the work on Earth, such as launching satellites, suborbital space transport vehicles, space tourism, and other minor tasks like making launch vehicles both large and cheap.

The national team is responsible for looking up at the stars, while private enterprises are responsible for making money in a down-to-earth manner, thus stimulating market vitality...

Upon hearing this, General Manager Liang clapped his hands and sighed, then said with a smile:

"State-owned enterprises steer the ship, private enterprises row the boat"—that's a brilliant summary! To be honest, the higher-ups are currently discussing easing policies, so who knows, maybe one day in the future, private enterprises will be able to build rockets!"

Getting back to the main point, after the old men chatted casually for a while, Liang Jianping pointed to the three documents in front of Song Xingye.

"Here are three documents, each representing one of the three questions. The difficulty is... about the same. Would you like to pick one? If you're lucky, you might get an easy question."

General Manager Liang, Engineer Lei, Engineer Lin, and Engineer Chen all wore gentle and modest smiles.

Song Xingye then randomly picked a book, opened the cover and looked at the title, which read—

"Emergency Response Plan and Critical Mass Reduction Report for Mars Probe Exceeding Weight by 50kg".

Wow...

This question has a wide range of topics.

Song Xingye was taken aback; this test had suddenly taken him to Mars.

He held up the question and showed it to the four experts: "This is the one I drew..."

Unexpectedly, Mr. Liang smiled mischievously, his eyes narrowing: "Silly boy, I was just kidding. No matter which one you draw, you have to answer all three questions, hehehe!"

Lei Gong: "Hehe!"

Engineer Lin: "Haha!"

Engineer Chen: "Hehe!"

Song Xingye: "..."

I knew that "winning three consecutive top honors" couldn't be achieved by just fooling someone with one question.

Song Xingye pouted, not bothered by being tricked, and patiently asked, "Is there a time limit?"

Mr. Liang's smile faded, and he said in a serious tone:

"You have 15 minutes to review the question. During this time, you can use your brain to think, or you can use paper and pen, or the computer next to you to look up information. In short, feel free to use your imagination."

"The background is simple: this Mars probe is 50 kilograms overweight. Now, suppose the four of us are the chief designers of the four major subsystems: propulsion, structure, electronics, and payload. You need to use your persuasive skills to convince us to reduce its weight."

"There is no standard answer to this question. It mainly tests your emotional intelligence and communication skills, and how well you demonstrate your values ​​and logical coherence when persuading others."

"If you successfully convince the four of us, that's equivalent to saving the country millions of dollars. Think about it carefully!"

After saying this, the four old men fell silent and stopped bothering Song Xingye.

Fifteen minutes, every second counts.

Song Xingye quickly opened the file.

The detector is 50 kilograms overweight... which is indeed a considerable problem.

For a launch vehicle with a takeoff weight of several hundred tons, 50 kilograms may be just a drop in the ocean.

But for deep space probes that are meticulous about every penny, these 50 kilograms mean tens of millions of dollars in additional launch costs, and could even directly lead to failure to reach orbit.

There's a famous saying in the aerospace industry: every gram of weight that goes into space is bought with an equal weight of gold.

At this moment, General Manager Liang, Engineer Lei, Engineer Lin, and Engineer Chen all silently became invisible, some sipping tea, some stretching their arms, some looking at the scenery from the French windows, and some tapping on their phones.

Song Xingye took a deep breath, a barely perceptible golden glint flashing in the depths of his eyes.

[Fault Prediction Eye], activated!

As expected, the detector being overweight will cause the launch to fail, so the overweight part is regarded as the failure point and is marked with a red box.

Those are the 'redundant' elements marked by the system—the parts that cause the system to be overweight and can be optimized.

Having a cheat code is so awesome...

This is such a brain-teasing question, but I got it right the first time, saving me so many brain cells...

Song Xingye calmly pondered for a while.

Write down a few strategies on the blank paper next to him.

Although the overweight components that could be improved were identified, the system wouldn't offer any hints on how to convince the designers to reduce the weight.

Everything still depends on Song Xingye's own words.

Fortunately, he was quite experienced in this area. When he was the chief designer of the Long March 9 rocket, he had a lot of arguments with the chief designers of various subsystems, and he believed he could handle it.

Soon, the 15 minutes passed in the blink of an eye.

Liang Jianping put away his phone, and the other three returned to their seats.

He smiled and said, "How's your thinking going, young man? Time's up?"

Song Xingye nodded.

General Manager Liang pointed to his colleagues: "Alright, from now on, Engineer Lei, Engineer Lin, Engineer Chen, and I will be the designers for the four major subsystems: power, structure, electronics, and load. Whose weight do you plan to start reducing from, and how are you going to convince them?"

Song Xingye's gaze swept over the four bigwigs, finally settling on Liang Jianping.

"We'll start with you!"

He grinned and stood up from his chair, half-jokingly.

"Whoa! You're using me as a guinea pig?"

Mr. Liang was taken aback at first, then threw his head back and laughed loudly, giving a thumbs up, "You've got guts! Come on, I'm all ears, let's see how you manage to squeeze a feather out of this tightwad!"